January PS4 Sales Nearly Double That of Xbox One

In the January console wars, Sony's PlayStation 4 bested Microsoft's Xbox One, according to a new report from the NPD Group.

The research firm didn't break out the specific sales figures for the PS4 and Xbox One , with NPD's Liam Callahan saying only that "PS4 led overall hardware sales this month, followed by the Xbox One." But Sony executive John Koller on Thursday described the sales of his company's next-generation console as "nearly doubling the nearest next-gen competitor."

If so, it would mark a triumphant return to the top hardware gaming spot for Sony, which saw Microsoft sell more of its new consoles than its rival in December. In total, Nintendo's 3DS portable was the top-selling gaming device in the final month of 2013, but the two console titans surged back to the lead spots in January, according to NPD.

In a separate blog post, Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of marketing, strategy, and business for Xbox, said that "Xbox One continue to be the best launch of an Xbox in our history."

"Xbox One consoles have sold at a rate of 2.29 times faster than Xbox 360 in the U.S. in the same timeframe for the first three months on the market," he wrote. "From our blazing start out of the gate, we have continued to see Xbox One delight fans in 13 markets around the world, with many more markets to come this year.

Meanwhile, Activision Blizzard's Call of Duty: Ghosts was the top-selling video game across all platforms. Overall, 2014 started out somewhat disappointingly for the video game industry as a whole, per NPD's latest tracking numbers of new physical sales of hardware and software (sales of used systems and games weren't included in the report).

Physical hardware sales jumped to $241 million compared with $205 million in January 2013, surely thanks in large part to the establishment of the PS4 and Xbox One in the market. That's an encouraging 17 percent increase, made even more impressive by the fact that, for bookkeeping purposes, NPD tracked five weeks' worth of sales for its January report last year as opposed to just four in 2014.

"Continued success of the new consoles drove a 17 percent increase in hardware sales in January 2014, and when taking into account the five-week month of January 2013 compared to the four-week month of January 2014, normalized sales of hardware were up 47 percent," Callahan said.

Meanwhile, the overall video game industry, including console, accessory, and software sales across multiple platforms, tumbled 21 percent from $835 million in January 2013 to just $664 million this past January. But Callahan cautioned that those numbers were skewed by the extra week of sales tracked a year ago.

"Overall retail video game sales ... would be down only 1 percent instead of down 21 percent, if sales were normalized to account for the five-week January 2013 compared to the four-week January 2014," he said.

In separate reports, NPD put revenue generated in January by used games and hardware, rentals, and other physical format sales at $113 million, while overall digital format sales came in at $335 million.

"We would estimate the total consumer spend [on gaming] in January to be $1.05 billion," Callahan said.

Breaking down January's new physical format sales further, NPD reported that overall gaming software sales, across the console, portable, and PC platforms, declined a whopping 41 percent year over year, from $393 million in January 2013 to just $232 million last month. Though the five-week versus four-week accounting period remains operative here, that's a stumble no matter how you slice it.

Excluding PC games, sales of titles for consoles and portables came in at $224 million in this five-week January, down 40 percent from the $373 million raked in during the longer period last year.

Accessory sales also took a hit, with NPD reporting that January 2014 sales of $199 million were down 23 percent year over year from $257 million in 2013. That decline would appear to be closer to flat, given the shorter January period this year. Still, the fact that Microsoft has bundled in its second-generation Kinect sensor with all packaging of the Xbox One may have something to do with a slip in accessory sales numbers, as the original Kinect was sold as a separate accessory for the Xbox 360.

NPD also listed the Top 10 selling video game titles across multiple platforms for January. Check it out below. Also see PCMag's full reviews of Sony's PS4 and Microsoft's Xbox One and the slideshow above.

Also, watch PCMag Live in the video below, which discusses PlayStation 4's success.

Damon Poeter got his start in journalism working for the English-language daily newspaper The Nation in Bangkok, Thailand. He covered everything from local news to sports and entertainment before settling on technology in the mid-2000s. Prior to joining PCMag, Damon worked at CRN and the Gilroy Dispatch. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle and Japan Times, among other newspapers and periodicals.
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